{ feuilleton }

top row: The Division Bell by Pink Floyd; A Rush of Blood to the Head by Coldplay.
bottom row: London Calling by The Clash; Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield.
The Royal Mail follows its series of British Design Classics postage stamps with a series dedicated to what they call “classic” album covers. The design classics in [...]

My long and rambling post about the work of Barney Bubbles in January 2007 generated a considerable flurry of renewed interest in the great designer and ended by saying “We’re overdue a decent book-length examination of his work and his influence.” Just over a year later, here we are…. Paul Gorman was one of the [...]

Numeral by Erté. Via Fabulon.
In which { feuilleton } celebrates its second birthday. As always, it’s a surprise seeing what catches the attention of readers or random browsers. The five most popular posts from the past year were as follows:
• The art of ejaculation. I saw Cary Kwok’s work mentioned in a gay magazine so [...]

Contrasts in Hi-Fi by Bob Sharples.
A Tribute to Alex Steinweiss
The Creator of the Album Cover
Robert Berman Gallery announces an exhibition of Alex Steinwiss. Original album covers, paintings, and collages by Steinweiss, and special tribute by selected artists. Co-curated by Kevin Reagan and Greg Escalante.
In 1939, a 23 year-old graphic designer revolutionized [...]

Electric Funk by Jimmy McGriff (1969).
Okay, so the graphical similarity between Jimmy McGriff’s album sleeve and Nick Drake’s, which appeared a year later, is probably coincidence but I couldn’t help noting it. Electric Funk was released on the Blue Note Records label which was highly regarded for its sleeve design so it wouldn’t be [...]

Hypnotique by Martin Denny (1959).
In Waikiki, where I live whenever I get the chance, a bistro known as the Daggar Bar and its accompanying Bora Bora Lounge has for some time been the mecca of people who enjoy a new type of music. I’m one of the gang that gathers there to hear the fresh, [...]

I spent much of the summer of 1983 playing games on a very primitive ZX Spectrum computer while listening to the first couple of Street Sounds Electro compilations. Those mix albums were among the best releases that year and remain highly sought after, seeing as they’ve never been reissued on CD.

The musical reputation of the [...]

Forever Changes by Love (1967).
Art by Bob Pepper, design by William S Harvey.
Following yesterday’s post about Philip K Dick covers (and Erik Davis’s appraisal of the DAW cover), I decided to check out Bob Pepper’s work a bit more and it quickly became obvious I should have joined the dots with this particular artist years [...]

Oh Yeah (1962). Sleeve design by Loring Eutemey.
“People say that I’m hollering. Man, I feel like hollering.” Charles Mingus.
Listening to this great album this week had me searching for the equally great sleeve design from the vinyl edition which vanished from the CD reissue. The cover that replaced it is a dour photo [...]

Every issue of the weekly German satire magazine—from 1896 to 1944—is available for download as a free PDF here. Amazing.
Combining brash and politically daring content, a bright, immediate, surprisingly modern graphic style, Simplicissimus featured the work of German cartoonist Thomas Theodor Heine on every cover, and published the work of writers such as Thomas Mann [...]

Image-heavy post! Please be patient.
Four designs for three bands, all by the same designer, the versatile and brilliant Barney Bubbles. A recent reference over at Ace Jet 170 to the sleeve for In Search of Space by Hawkwind made me realise that Barney Bubbles receives little posthumous attention outside the histories of his former employers. [...]

Today’s book purchase is a secondhand copy of the first novel in Colin MacInnes’ London trilogy (Absolute Beginners and Mr Love and Justice were the others). City of Spades was first published in 1957 but this is the 1985 reissue with a cover by Neville Brody which is the main reason for my picking it [...]

Battling through the Xmas post, two new volumes arrived here this week, from Black Velvet and Black Dog Publishing respectively. First up was Serpenti & Scale, the Italian edition of Snakes & Ladders by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell. This has been available for some time in English, of course. The translated version features some [...]

The new masthead designed by Luke Prowse, with a coat of arms
by wood engraver Edwina Ellis.
So, in today’s Neville Brody news (no, I’m not intending on posting about him every day…) it seems the designer has been busy with colleague Luke Prowse making The (London) Times look better. Not before time (so to speak), it [...]

From Black Dog Publishing. Words by Steve Taylor, design by Neville Brody.
If you pick up a copy of this week’s Heat magazine in 30 years time, think how funny it will seem. Our obsession with D list celebrities’ private lives, weight loss and reality TV shows, will become ridiculous in the light of tomorrow’s trends.
Magazines [...]

The event booklet, designed by Neville Brody.
William Burroughs’ reading in the city of Manchester took place on the 4th of October, 1982, at Factory Records’ Haçienda club, as part of the Manchester “edition” of The Final Academy, a Burroughs-themed art event put together by Psychic TV (Genesis P Orridge & Peter Christopherson) and others. A [...]

The (low-res) digitisation of the past continues apace on this site which is accumulating cover scans from a host of American sf and fantasy magazines. Oddly enough, I’d been looking for a place with pictures of the early Omni covers just recently, but this site didn’t come up on Google, or if it did, I [...]

Finally, us poor CD designers are being treated with a bit more respect in the digital music world. Lots of improvements in the new iTunes (is it my imagination or is the sound processing better in this version?) but best of all is the splendid Cover Flow feature which allows you to select music by [...]

Seven Songs by 23 Skidoo, FM 2008, 1982.
Since I made a post earlier about bad album design, it’s only right to redress the balance somewhat. Neville Brody has long been a favourite designer and something of an influence since it was looking at his work during the 1980s that made me think seriously about design [...]